A gang of skinheads 'Russia 88' are filming propaganda videos in order to place it on the internet. At the same time the camera records the life of the gang, they become accustomed to this ... See full summary »

Storyline

Frankie is a young man from Netherlands, in 1979. His father is a Jew, survivor from the Holocaust, a very strict man who owns a Laundry. His mother is a good-hearted woman who wants her husband and son to get along. Frankie escapes his daily life with his friend Jeffrey, going to underground punk and rock clubs. When his mother is hospitalized, Frankie is devastated. His father seems to not care and Frankie, feeling angry and lonely, gets involved with a Neo-Nazi gang, who often fight against the Punks and minorities of the town. Frankie is accepted and, unknowingly, he start to become in his own enemy.Written by
Bulma PunkRocker

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Trivia

In the scene where Henk (Juda Goslinga) tells Frankie that his mother has passed away, Frankie's (Robert de Hoog) nose starts to bleed. This was pure and natural and was not planned. The actor whiped away the blood but continued to play the scene. Eventually this take made it into the final cut. See more »

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User Reviews

'Skin', set in a grim Dutch working class area in 1979, tells the story of Frankie, who starts out as a normal, somewhat rebellious teenager, and ends up as a neo-Nazi in jail. His Jewish father, a concentration camp survivor, is unable to communicate with his wife and son, which frustrates Frankie and has already created a clearly uneasy father-son relationship at the beginning of the film. When Frankie's mother gets seriously ill and needs to be hospitalized, all frustrations come creeping out from under Frankie's skin and a rough process in which he alienates from his father and most of his friends is set in motion. Even though Frankie does not intend for it to happen, he gradually finds some solace with a group of skinhead neo-Nazis, and escalation ensues.

There are some parallels between this film and the classic 'American History X', but whereas that film shows us how a remorseful neo-Nazi seeks redemption, this one explores how exactly a young person who would seem an unlikely candidate for adopting such views ends up doing so for all the wrong reasons (if there even are any right ones to begin with). Moreover, 'Skin' is a strong, gripping story about what may happen when communication fails, set against a background of growing intolerance and violence.

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